The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

Amazon: Kindle Black Friday sales quadruple; Kindle Fire tops sales

Amazon.com said Monday that sales of it Kindle device lineup on Black Friday quadrupled the number sold on the day-after-Thanksgiving last year.

But just how many Kindle eReaders and tablets were sold? Amazon, again isn't saying, falling in line with the online retail giant's practice of not releasing specific numbers for its Kindle sales.

Since the first Kindle eReader was launched in 2007, Amazon has yet to release any specific sales numbers, only ever saying that the Kindle has sold millions.

Likewise, Barnes & Noble has made it a practice of never sharing its specific sale numbers for its eReader or tablet sales thus far. However, the company does say its Nook Color tablet is currently the top-selling Android tablet on the market.

Apple, whose iPad is the top seller in the tablet market, does release its sales figures for top-selling items. Last quarter, Apple said it sold 11.1 million iPads, up 166% from a year earlier. Since the iPad first launched in 2010, Apple has said it has sold more than 39 million tablets.

Amazon, based in Seattle, has been projected to sell between 3 million and 5 million Kindle Fire tablets before the year is done.

The Fire was Amazon's "best-selling product across all of Amazon.com on Black Friday," even outselling the Kindle eReaders that range in price from $79 to $189, the company said in a statement.

"Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we'd already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the best-selling product across all of Amazon.com," said Dave Limp, the vice president of Amazon's Kindle division, in the statement. "Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family -- customers purchased 4X as many Kindle devices as they did last Black Friday -- and last year was a great year.”

The Kindle Fire was also the top-selling tablet in-store at Target on Black Friday, Nik Nayar, the retail chain's vice president of merchandising, said in the statement.